Rational Choice Perspective Flashcards

Core Concepts of Rational Choice Perspective

Criminal Behavior is Purposive/Purposeful

• Criminal behavior is never senseless; there is always an anticipated or intended benefit to the offender.
• Benefits can include:
  • Material reward
  • Excitement
  • Prestige
  • Fun
  • Sexual gratification
  • Defiance or domination of others
• Example: A man brutally beats his wife as the easiest way to make her comply.
• The media often presents crime in isolation, making it look random and senseless, obscuring potential patterns or motivations.
• Senseless acts of vandalism or violence may generate prestige among peers.
• Joyriding: Stealing cars for fun and thrill-seeking journeys was common, illustrating young people's desire to drive powerful machines they couldn't afford.
• Crime is purposeful, with a reason behind it, even if not immediately obvious.

Rationality, Even if Bounded

• Even in seemingly irrational cases (clinical delusion, pathological compulsion), there is some degree of rationality, albeit limited.

• Behavior is rational but bounded, limited in understanding possibilities, potentials, and consequences.

• Quote: Offenders do the best they can with the limits of time, resources, and information available to them (Cornish & Clark, 2001).

• Assumption: All offenders think before they act, even momentarily.

• Conditions under which decisions about offending are made:

  • Offenders rarely possess all necessary facts about the risks, efforts, and rewards of crime.
  • Criminal choices are made quickly and revised hastily if inaccurate.
  • Criminals might rely on previously successful approaches, improvising when facing unforeseen circumstances.
  • Once embarked on a criminal career, offenders focus on the rewards rather than the risks, assessing immediate possibilities of being caught over long-term punishments.

• Tim Newburn's summarization of bounded rationality:

  • Quick Decision: Not well thought through; e.g., "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
  • Imperfect Knowledge: Lacking crucial information; e.g., "I didn't know they had a dog."
  • Impaired Decision Making: Influenced by emotions, drugs, alcohol, or cognitive development; e.g., "It was the alcohol acting, not me."

Decision Making is Crime-Specific

• Offenders often commit various types of crimes but avoid others.
• Decision making about risks and rewards is crime-specific.
• Choice perspective models must have a crime-specific focus.
• Different types of crime, even the same crime in different circumstances, require different decision making.
• Example: Burglary in an affluent area vs. a deprived area involves different factors influencing the risk-reward calculation.
• Cybercrime: Many different types, such as cyberstalking, romance crimes, cyberbullying, malware, denial of service attacks, phishing, and hacking. Researchers break it down into specific forms to understand decision-making processes.

Event Decisions vs. Involvement Decisions

• Cornish and Clark identify several stages in the decision-making processes of offending.

• Involvement Decisions:

  • Individuals decide whether they are willing to offend to satisfy their needs.
  • Most people are not willing.
  • Initial involvement/initiation phase.
  • Individuals choose various ways to fulfill their needs.
  • Cost-benefit analysis at the beginning; different people perceive different costs and benefits of getting involved in crime.
  • Decisions to habituate criminal behavior or desist depend on different information; influenced by the success of crime commission and other factors.
  • Relate to stages of a criminal career: initiation, habituation, and desistance.
  • Medium to long-term decisions.

• Event Decisions:

  • Once someone decides they're willing to offend, they make event decisions.
  • Crime-centered and crime-specific.
  • May involve light or in-depth planning.
  • Short-term decisions.

Involvement Comprises Different Stages

• Different stages relate to initiation, habituation, and desistance.

• Cornish and Clark's initiation model (originally for suburban burglary) presents factors influencing the initial decision to get involved in crime:

  • Background Factors: Personal characteristics (personality, self-control, impulsiveness), gender, intelligence, upbringing (family dynamics, poor education, criminal behavior in family).

  • Experience and Learning: Experience with crime, conflict with police, moral attitudes, self-perception, ability to plan, skills used in crime.

  • Current Circumstances: Marital status, housing situation, employment, friends engaged in deviant lifestyles, car ownership.

  • Needs and Motives: Urgent need for cash, a job, a need for excitement to supplement income.

  • Opportunities and Inducements: Legitimate and illegitimate opportunities to commit crime.

  • Needs, motives, opportunities, and inducements combine to create perceived solutions for satisfying needs.

  • Evaluation of solutions involves weighing up risks, rewards, and benefits/costs.

  • Leads to the readiness of someone to commit crime.

• Event decisions kick in once someone is motivated to commit crime; become much more crime-specific.

Crime Event Disaggregation: Crime Scripts

• A crime script is the disaggregation of the many different steps and stages of a crime event.
• Example: Stealing lead off of a church roof in the UK.
  Functions
  * Preparation:
  * Select a suitable church (reconnaissance).
  * Acquire necessary tools (roof lifting tools).
  * Acquire means of transporting stolen lead (car, van).
  Preconditions:
  * Access the church.
  * Park the vehicle close to the site.
  * Scale the roof (ladder, climbing skills).
  * Theft:
  * Removing lead with tools.
  * Post-Theft
  * Move lead from roof to ground.
  * Load vehicle.
  * Exit the church with lead.
  * Profitting:
  * Locate a scrap metal dealer willing to buy stolen metal.
  * Deliver lead to the buyer.
  * Receive payment.
  Exit Scrap Metal Location
• Each step involves different decisions, and analyzing risks and rewards at each stage can reveal opportunities for situational deterrence.